Bernardo Villela is like a mallrat except at the movies. He is a writer, director, editor and film enthusiast who seeks to continue to explore and learn about cinema, chronicle the journey and share his findings.

Hero Whipped: From Film to Comics (Part 2)

Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan in Tarzan and His Mate (MGM)

Think of my last few statements in cinematic terms. Something like Tarzan has been remade countless times and while rebooting clearly is a cinematic trend one never renumbers films without a purpose, without first having wiped the slate clean. Similarly, rarely is the question asked in film can I watch part 16 and get it. As I’ve stated prior if you can it’s probably a bad film.

There’s two ways it would seem to become a comics fan: one you’re born into it and are reading them from when you’re very young or two you find it later on in life and ask a butt-load of questions.

Now, in a way I could’ve been the former. As I mentioned I loved strips and still do. However, for all intents and purposes comics taught me to speak Portuguese. Now granted I always knew it considering my parents came to the US from Brazil, however, my mother would frequently read to me from Mauricio de Sousa’s Turma da Mônica books and it taught me to read in Portuguese and improved my vocabulary (and it does to this day). I also like many American “All Ages” titles. I grew up in an America that still had Harvey’s comics and one of the heartbreaks of my being “born again” was discovering they went under and that I’d only find those character in collections and sometimes costly back issues.

The revamped Gloria, Richie and Dollar (Ape Comics)

However, much to my delight less than a year later two of Harvey’s biggest starts, Richie Rich and Casper, have found a new home at Ape Comics and in my estimation they are thriving but I digress. The superhero realm was aside from being a majority always a daunting prospect and I never quite graduated there.

Growing up on Staten Island I took quite a few classes at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center as a kid and looking through the course offerings one day I decided I’d switch things up and I think the course was labeled Comic Book Drawing or something. I forget if there was a description but what I recall vividly was the course title was misleading. It seemed to be a lot freer than what we got. Essentially, it was a superhero drawing class. Now, I was inexperienced dealing with the human form as an artist in general at the time much less being asked to draw the overly-perfect, and let’s face it, exaggerated superhero bodies. It was a frustrating exercise in futility. While I can’t say I didn’t learn or get anything out of it (namely a character of my creation, a monster named Potroast, who was the hero fighting the evil Loumanna, based on the teacher) I did sense a bit of disdain and frustration from my instructor as well. It wasn’t my aesthetic, he knew it and resented me for it and it was a painful first encounter with comic book elitism.

Thankfully, in my sojourn as a born again thus far I have not met a Loumanna or Comic Book Guy. Allow me to state for the record: I am fine with nerdiness. I am a proud nerd on many subjects what I’m put off by is militant nerds who own the truth and can’t converse civilly or scoff at those who either don’t know or God forbid make a mistake.

So there was another comics trauma. Now one band-aid to the accessibility issue would be the return of some form of editor’s notes. Now I know what you’re thinking: they’re an eye-sore and they take you out of the moment of the story. However, much as the aesthetics of page layouts have changed so too can the dissemination of relevant back issues. It can be included on the front backstory page or at the end. Even with a simple URL. The fact of the matter is this is the Internet Age. I can look up a back issue and buy it off of New Kadia or some other site or go to Comixology or the publisher’s themselves for a digital copy. Specific back issues in most cases can be found if you want to find them.

ALF (Alien Productions)

A perfect example also comes from my journey from one who had disavowed comics to being a born again. When I was a kid, OK and to this day, I loved ALF to no end. I watched the show. I had the lunchbox (Plastic, this was the 80s after all) and I read the comics that Marvel published under its Star imprint (I’ve come to read many of these titles in my rebirth and have liked all of them- REBOOT it at least!). Anyway, whether it was me or my mother on one of her “Your closet’s too full” campaigns, I got rid of them. All of them. I regretted it many times. Suddenly, as I was getting back into comics this came back to me so I started searching the web. Sure enough they were mostly there but people were gouging you for single issues. However, that’s a common Amazon practice so I try E-Bay. Jackpot. A California comic book shop put up the whole series. Numbered and specials for what amounted to LESS than the cover price on each issue. Buy it now I said and that mistake was rectified and I am relishing the overly long re-read process.

So, yes, the internet can provide those valuable back issues. It’s the great equalizer. Similarly with films if you ask me, in college I learned that there was this 7-hour feature, Satantango, that has nothing but rave reviews from all who sat through it all. It had hit E-Bay and I saw it before it hit DVD and wouldn’t have known about it without the web. Granted this makes me sound like a geriatric fool who dances a jig at the marvel of the telephone but the fact remains it’s an incredible tool and one the film industry at the moment is utilizing to far greater effect.